Warhol copies Brillo, someone copies Warhol: Hijinks ensue!

Architecture & Interiors

Over 100 of Andy Warhol’s “Brillo Boxes” have been found to be “different” from others…
Yes it’s a rather strong claim – The board avoids using words such as “fake” or “inauthentic” in its report, nor would it say whether or not it will stamp any boxes presented to it as “denied”, or revoke existing letters of opinion.

The short story:

Two series of boxes produced by Pontus Hultén, the founding director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Hultén claimed that Warhol authorised the production of the boxes for the seminal exhibition that Hultén curated in Stockholm in 1968.

But in 2007, the Swedish newspaper Expressen discovered that no wooden boxes had been displayed in the show and that cardboard boxes from the Brillo factory had been used instead. It set out to research the date and manufacture of Hultén’s boxes, many of which had entered the market.

Anyhow – the prices climb and climb and climb – are auctioned off (they had letters of authenticity and papers and important people saying they are real). Ten were sold through Christie’s shortly afterwards to a UK buyer for £475,650, who turned out to be the art dealer Anthony d’Offay.

The board now says there are two sets of Hultén-­produced boxes: a small number (about 10 to 15) made in 1968, straight after the show. The board refers to these as “Stockholm type boxes”. The rest, 105, were produced at Hultén’s request by carpenters for a 1990 exhibition in Russia. The board refers to these as “Malmö type boxes”.